Not Robinson’s (New York 2140, 2017, etc.) strongest work, but not without interest, either.
The murder of a Chinese politician on the moon in the mid-21st century sends a mismatched couple on the run and signals a looming crisis on Earth.
American Fred Fredericks is delivering a secure quantum-entangled phone to Chang Yazu, chief administrator of the Chinese Lunar Authority, but the two have barely shaken hands when Chang slumps to the ground, dead by poison. The confused Fred is accused of the crime, a pawn in a power struggle among various Chinese government factions, who also seek control of Chan Qi, the pregnant daughter of a top party official and the leader of a migrant workers rights movement. The two bounce between the Earth and moon and back in search of a safe refuge, aided at times by poet and “cloud star” Ta Shu, a friend of Peng Ling, the strong contender to become China’s first woman president. The title initially seems like a call back to the first entry in Robinson’s terraforming trilogy, Red Mars, but while the lunar landscape is a source of beautifully described detail and the lower gravity acts as obstacle and asset, this is not a hard sci-fi novel. Rather, it’s a political thriller where the moon is a backdrop and game piece for both China and the United States, two powerful nations facing significant political and economic unrest. A white man writing about Chinese politics and mainly Chinese characters could seem questionable in a publishing milieu that still lacks sufficient diverse voices; all one can say is that as per usual for Robinson, it seems well-researched. It is unfortunate that Chan Qi’s primary qualities are being pregnant and cranky; while tough and passionate, there’s little sign of the charisma typically associated with a populist leader. The more well-rounded Ta Shu is still mostly a plot device: He writes the occasional profound-seeming poem, but he’s mainly there to rescue our heroes at various moments and provide the author’s desired infodumps on physics and Chinese politics. Fred Fredericks (the white man) is the most intriguingly drawn character. While no explicit diagnosis is given, the author offers a vivid and relatively plausible depiction of a man on the spectrum, with social difficulties and a sensory processing disorder.
Not Robinson’s (New York 2140, 2017, etc.) strongest work, but not without interest, either.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-26237-8
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Orbit
Review Posted Online: Aug. 20, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2018
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
An ambitious and satisfying conclusion to a monumental saga.
Brown completes his science-fiction trilogy with another intricately plotted and densely populated tome, this one continuing the focus on a rebellion against the imperious Golds.
This last volume is incomprehensible without reference to the first two. Briefly, Darrow of Lykos, aka Reaper, has been “carved” from his status as a Red (the lowest class) into a Gold. This allows him to infiltrate the Gold political infrastructure…but a game’s afoot, and at the beginning of the third volume, Darrow finds himself isolated and imprisoned for his insurgent activities. He longs both for rescue and for revenge, and eventually he gets both. Brown is an expert at creating violent set pieces whose cartoonish aspects (“ ‘Waste ’em,’ Sevro says with a sneer” ) are undermined by the graphic intensity of the savagery, with razors being a favored instrument of combat. Brown creates an alternative universe that is multilayered and seething with characters who exist in a shadow world between history and myth, much as in Frank Herbert’s Dune. This world is vaguely Teutonic/Scandinavian (with characters such as Magnus, Ragnar, and the Valkyrie) and vaguely Roman (Octavia, Romulus, Cassius) but ultimately wholly eclectic. At the center are Darrow, his lover, Mustang, and the political and military action of the Uprising. Loyalties are conflicted, confusing, and malleable. Along the way we see Darrow become more heroic and daring and Mustang, more charismatic and unswerving, both agents of good in a battle against forces of corruption and domination. Among Darrow’s insights as he works his way to a position of ascendancy is that “as we pretend to be brave, we become so.”
An ambitious and satisfying conclusion to a monumental saga.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-345-53984-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Dec. 8, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2015
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